That council member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sarver didn’t actually name the two cities but that he made it clear that he would leave if the City Council doesn’t approve the arena deal. This, in a conversation that came as the votes were becoming shaky.

“He said, ‘If you guys are not going to vote for this, let me go, just let me go somewhere else,” the council member told me Thursday. “He said, ‘I want out. If you’re not going to build my stadium then I want out.’ He did not specifically say Seattle or Las Vegas but that was my understanding.”

The city official said the context of the conversation, and other conversations he has had, made it clear to him that Sarver was talking about leaving the state.

Several other city officials have told me that Sarver, in negotiating the arena deal, has talked about “other options out there.”

“The Phoenix Suns are not leaving Phoenix,” Sarver said, in a video released on Twitter. “I am 100 percent committed and have been for last for four years to find a solution to keep them in downtown Phoenix where they belong.”

The problem, of course, is that the City Council is not even 50 percent committed to the deal that calls for the public to kick in $150 million to renovate Talking Stick Resort Arena.

And without major changes, I don’t see that changing in a month.

Or in three months, when the city likely will elect a mayor who recently said "spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a huge renovation for the Phoenix Suns is not a priority for me.”

As for now, it takes four votes to kill the deal and already Council members Vania Guevara, Sal DiCiccio and Jim Waring are firmly “no’s.”

Interim Mayor Thelda Williams is promoting the deal and Councilwomen Debra Star and Laura Pastor are believed to support it.

That leaves Councilman Michael Nowakowski – who is facing the threat of recall -- and Councilwoman Felicita Mendoza – an appointee who will be replaced in the city's March election -- as the swing votes.

A no from either one would kill the deal.

If a deal ultimately can't be done, Rowley says the Suns would look elsewhere.